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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26060875">tectonic</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainiest/pseuds/miuyi'>miuyi (rainiest)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>SEVENTEEN (Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Avatar &amp; Benders Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 11:21:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,739</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26060875</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainiest/pseuds/miuyi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Some mountains aren't meant to be climbed.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jeon Wonwoo/Kwon Soonyoung | Hoshi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>K-Pop Ficmix 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>tectonic</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/gifts"></a>.</li>


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25239355">ashes to ashes</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimsum/pseuds/dimsum">dimsum</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>dear dimsum,<br/>your original fic factory reset my brain and this universe is everything i have ever wanted and more. to play around with it has been such a joy. the soonwoo content in your original work was only like 300 words total and it made me go feral beyond belief. thank you so much for the opportunity and i hope you enjoy!<br/> </p><p>a barebones atla primer for those who haven’t seen it to help this fic make sense:<br/>- the world is divided into four nations: earth, fire, air and water<br/>- bending is the power to manipulate one of the elements and is hereditary. not everyone is born a bender and only the avatar, a special bender reincarnated in a cycle through the four nations, can bend more than one element.<br/>- additionally, some more advanced forms of bending exist that not all benders can perform (eg. metal or lavabending for earthbenders, bloodbending and healing for waterbenders, lightning for firebenders)<br/>- in the original series the avatar was an airbender but in this fic the avatar was originally from the fire nation (both later mastered the other three elements). however, like in the original series, all the airbenders were wiped out except for one<br/>- the four nations lived in harmony until the fire nation attacked but you know that one already<br/>- republic city is a city-state established by the avatar after the war, where people of all nations can live in harmony<br/>- the spirit world is a parallel universe to the physical world inhabited by creatures known as spirits.  it isn’t an afterlife, and can be accessed through meditating in the physical world. except for the use of physical portals at the north and south poles, only the avatar and some benders with rare spiritual capabilities can get there</p><p> </p><p><b>WARNING:</b> fic contains a very brief mention of sexual assault allegations. they are not related to any characters based on svt members/other idols. other warnings include alcohol, mentions of sex and canon-typical violence and themes of war</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Fifteen years of friendship and Wonwoo still can’t get a read on Joshua.</p><p>“I’m serious,” Joshua says, a sly tilt to the edge of his mouth. He’s sitting cross-legged on a lilypad that floats three feet off the surface of a silver pond. That, too, Wonwoo couldn’t tell if he’d done as a joke or if it’s actually how he spends his time down here.</p><p>“Right now? He’s dying now?”</p><p>“Not now,” Joshua says breezily, waving a hand. Something peculiar crosses his expression, swift as a sparrow. “Soon, though.”</p><p>“Joshua,” Wonwoo says, stressing each syllable, “I genuinely can’t tell if you’re joking.” A giraffe-shaped creature with the head of a duck appears from the fog at the far side of the pond, blinks at them, and dips its head to drink.</p><p>Joshua smiles. A twinkle in his eye that’s too perfect to be real. “I can assure you, I’m never joking. Go get him, Wonwoo.”</p><p>He makes a peace sign, the cool way with the back of his hand showing that he picked up from Vernon. That, Wonwoo knows, means he’s about to sign off.</p><p>“Wait,” Wonwoo says. Joshua lowers the peace sign to his lap. “Where do I find him?”</p><p>Joshua sighs. “The Spirit World is a mirror, not a map. I’ve told you all that I know.” </p><p>“It’s been years,” Wonwoo says. Can Joshua read minds here? “Why me?”</p><p>“It has to be you.” Joshua cocks his head, like he’s heard a sound far off in the distance. “Wait, here’s something: if a woman covered in snow gives you advice, you should take it.”</p><p>“What the fuck?” Wonwoo says. “Joshua, I-” but the world is already going wobbly at its center. Joshua flashes a peace sign.</p><p>He disappears, collapsing the link to the Spirit World with him and sending Wonwoo plunging through icy, dark layers of atmosphere back down to earth.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>When the war was over Minghao went back to the Fire Nation as the honored guest of the new Fire Lord. The rest of them weren’t quite sure what to do with themselves, so they did the same thing they’d always done: they followed him.</p><p>It was a strange place to be. Deep red chambers and a quiet that shared the air. The man who used to live in this palace wanted to kill them all. Still would, if he had the chance.</p><p>“Uh oh.” Soonyoung was wearing a guest robe, Fire Nation colors on Earth Kingdom fabric. “Someone’s thinking about death.” He edged around the door to Wonwoo’s chamber, arms wrapped around himself, and leaned back to ease it closed.</p><p>“Habit,” Wonwoo said. “What’s up?”</p><p>Soonyoung raised his eyebrow. The low candlelight made him look more dangerous than usual, and Wonwoo had seen him lodge a knife in a man’s heart from seventy feet. He untied the robe and shrugged it off, no nonsense.</p><p>A tent on a mountainside, abandoned Air temple, Fire Nation suite; the two of them always managed to end up here. Soonyoung once joked that they’d had sex in more places than most people would ever see in their lives. </p><p>Afterwards, he felt Soonyoung nudge up next to him. “Hey.” His hair tickled over Wonwoo’s shoulder like a long-legged spider. Wonwoo didn’t open his eyes. “Hey.”</p><p>“I’m post-fuck vibing,” Wonwoo said, cracking an eye open. The ceiling was out-of-focus. He’d be nearsighted ‘til the day he died. “Please respect that.”</p><p>A pause. Soonyoung wasn’t the type to hesitate, usually. “Are we finally gonna talk about it?”</p><p>Wonwoo stared and stared at the ceiling. Followed the decorative drapes of fabric with his eyes to where they connected to the corners of the room. Wondered if they were flammable. Wondered how many seconds it would take him to get the soles of his feet on the earth, were armed soldiers to burst in right now.</p><p>He closed his eyes. The blurriness made his head hurt. “Talk about what?” </p><p>Nothing. Not even breathing.</p><p>“Alright then,” Soonyoung said at last. He shifted around on the bed, but Wonwoo couldn’t tell if he was moving closer or further away. “Okay.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>No matter where I start from I always end up here, asking myself the same question.</i>
  </p>
</div><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“So I went to the theatre,” Jun says, instead of announcing his presence like a normal human being. He leans his glider against the wall and jumps off the windowsill into Wonwoo’s room. In the space behind him, a single stationary boat glows on the oil-black sea.</p><p>“Good evening, Jun,” Wonwoo says, going back to folding the clothes laid out on his bed.</p><p>“Good evening! So the play was a love story, which-” Jun mimes vomiting into Wonwoo’s potted plant, “-but there was this one part where the heroine meets an Airbender. She’s supposed to get lifted up into the air, but the wire snapped and the actress fell.” He whistles the sound effect, high to low. “Like a sack of potatoes, she went. All the way down.” </p><p>“Jesus, Jun,” Wonwoo says, sparing a glance over his shoulder. Silent as a street cat, Jun has crossed the room and is squatting atop Wonwoo’s desk on the balls of his feet. “You didn’t think to, I dunno, <i>do</i> something?”</p><p>“Oh, she was fine. Broken leg, straight to the healers.” He picks up a fountain pen and twirls it between his fingers. “So the entire cast was freaking out backstage when the actress playing the heroine’s sister just walked out and started talking. Gave this heart-wrenching monologue about how her sister went before her time, and how she’d forever regret all that time they spent fighting in the first act. Half the audience was in tears.” </p><p>Wonwoo sighs and turns around, giving up on packing. “This is all very morbid. I’m not sure what your point is.”</p><p>Jun puts the pen down, not in the same spot he found it. “The sister and the heroine’s beloved didn’t fall in love, but they grieved together. Became friends for life. My point <i>is</i>,” a breeze flutters around the room as Jun rises and steps off the desk, air cradling him all the way to the floor, “sometimes going off-script gives you something way better than what you had in the first place. There’s always more than one way to do something and there’s especially more than one way to love someone.”</p><p>Wonwoo tries to digest all that like a lump of coal. “Christ, Junnie. All that from a botched play?”</p><p>Jun shrugs. “The mind starts to wander when you meditate for four hours a day.”</p><p>Jun’s brain has always worked in strange ways. Jun says things no one else could dream up. Jun is the last of the Air nomads and his blood is precious. Maybe that’s why, after several glasses of red wine, Minghao stares like he wants to sink his teeth into him. It’s probably also why he refuses to touch him and keeps a steady stream of eligible women coming to official events, but that train crash is absolutely none of Wonwoo’s business.</p><p>“Is this your way of telling me goodbye?” Wonwoo asks finally.</p><p>“No,” Jun says, “this is.” He crosses the room and wraps Wonwoo in his long arms. He smells like temple incense and fresh air. “Goodbye, Wonwoo. Safe travels.”</p><p>Jun picks up his glider, sits in Wonwoo’s windowsill and salutes him with two fingers, then throws himself backwards into the night like a diver off the edge of a boat.</p><p>The stillness Jun leaves behind is intimidating. The evening silence spills back into the room, filling every corner. Out the window, in the vast darkness of the harbor floats that same pinprick glow. There’s a person out there in that light. People, maybe. As Wonwoo watches, the boat starts up its engine and wanders back to shore.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Wonwoo thinks he and Minghao might’ve become best friends if it weren’t for the months Wonwoo spent knocking his ass into the dirt just for the fun of it. After a gruelling ten-hour training session that ended in Minghao walking off into the forest in tears, Joshua had taken Wonwoo aside and told him, “We should not punish others for the faults we find within ourselves.”</p><p>“I dunno, I think you just have a complex,” Soonyoung said, tearing into a strip of jerky with his back teeth. His blades were laid out on a rock beside him from big to small, glinting in the sun like freshly-caught fish. “Sure, he’s been on the streets for years, but you can tell he’s high-born just from the way he speaks. He’s everything your parents wished you were.”</p><p>Wonwoo stood up and almost stormed off, before realising that’d just prove his similarity to Minghao. “Damn it, Soonyoung.” He sat back down on the rock, reluctant and restless. Soonyoung held out the gross chewed-up end of his jerky, gaze conciliatory. Wonwoo swatted him away. “Go easy on me, would you?”</p><p>But Soonyoung never went easy on him. That’s probably why Wonwoo had stuck with him for so long. His parents were never easy on him either but they did it out of concern for who they hoped he’d become, not who he was.</p><p>It was Soonyoung who shrugged and said, “Wanna fight? Like, physically,” after Wonwoo came to school for the third time that week on no sleep because of all the extra tutoring his parents had him in, too exhausted to be anything other than silent and furious.</p><p>“What? Now?” He looked around at the crowded school cafeteria. “You know I’m a bending prodigy, right? I’ll flatten your ass.”</p><p>Soonyoung shrugged again. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”</p><p>Their first time ended with Soonyoung’s blunted practise blade to his throat. Soonyoung couldn’t bend, but he was as fast as a jackrabbit. It took weeks for Wonwoo to manage to pin him just once.</p><p>Eventually, he graduated from sparring with Soonyoung to the illegal Earthbending fighting ring and earned himself quite the reputation. Got noticed by one Avatar who was in the market for an Earthbending teacher and found out by his parents all in the same night, they imprisoned him in his bedroom, and the rest is public record. Well, most of it.</p><p>(Soonyoung smashing an elbow through his third-floor window in the middle of the night. No light striking him except the moon at his back, his irises liquid-black. Laying his jacket over the jagged glass on the frame and holding his hand out to Wonwoo. The look on his face so open, and so sorry. Saying nothing for once in his goddamn life.)</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Wonwoo crosses the border into the Earth Kingdom on ostrich horse-back. It’s been a decade since he’s been on the road like this, but traveling is much easier now that he’s an adult and has a sizable pouch of gold, courtesy of Minghao.</p><p>“This city will fall apart if you’re gone too long,” he said, gaze not moving from the documents stacked on his desk. His glasses were placed off to the side; he only wore them for public appearances. His eyesight was perfect.</p><p>“No it won’t,” said Wonwoo. </p><p>Minghao looked up. Bags under his eyes, struck by the brutal yellow light from the reading lamp arching over him. “Oh yes, it will. So go bail that idiot out of whatever trouble he’s gotten himself into and get back here.”</p><p>They had an unspoken agreement between them that if Wonwoo didn’t bring up Jun then Minghao wouldn’t bring up Soonyoung. <i>We could’ve been best friends,</i> Wonwoo wants to say. <i>Don’t you ever think about that?</i></p><p>Wonwoo follows their only lead to the shady outskirts of Omashu. In public, Minghao and Junhui get recognised on sight, Joshua and Wonwoo by name, and Soonyoung by neither. It makes him very hard to track down.</p><p>Wonwoo asks around town. Has anyone seen a guy who’s impossibly skilled with knives, or stupid drunk off three beers and regaling an entire tavern with wild stories? But nothing comes up.</p><p>He pulls his Councilman rank on some poor attendant and takes a stroll through Omashu’s prisons. Next he tries taking a trip to the local library and scouring the newspaper records for reports of unsolved knife crime. Six months ago a man with allegations against him by a dozen different women was found in his home with his throat slit. A schoolteacher claims a non-bender armed with twin blades defended her during a home invasion.</p><p>But after a week of chasing up leads Wonwoo comes up with nothing. His ostrich horse is growing restless in the stables, and Wonwoo is growing more and more convinced Soonyoung has moved on.</p><p>The closest city is Gaoling to the east, just six days’ ride. </p><p>“You wouldn’t have,” Wonwoo asks the air, staring down the eastbound road. His ostrich horse chirps and fluffs its wings, confused. “Would you?”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i> The things I think of most often are also the ones I never speak about. </i>
  </p>
  <p>
    <i>Why is that? </i>
  </p>
</div><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It took Wonwoo a long time to admit to himself that maybe he was suited to life in court after all. This was after Republic City’s rocky conception, after Wonwoo spent four years at university in Ba Sing Se and shadowing the city’s Councillors at Minghao’s request, after Joshua returned to the Northern Water Tribe and married his childhood sweetheart.</p><p>“We won the war,” Soonyoung complained one evening, after a particularly grueling reception dinner with Southern Water Tribe officials. Minghao was like a duck in water in the midst of court politics and Wonwoo’s years of training meant he could hold his own, but Soonyoung wasn’t cut out for court and he knew it. “I thought that meant we got to leave all this shit behind.”</p><p>“Minghao is the Avatar,” Wonwoo said, unbuttoning his high collar. The gold embroidery on his traditional Earth Kingdom gown had been scratching at him all night. “And we need allies if we’re going to establish a new city-state. He doesn’t have a choice.”</p><p>“But <i>you</i> do.” Accusation crept into Soonyoung’s voice sometimes, when he wasn’t careful. “<i>I</i> do.”</p><p>It wasn’t anything like it had been in the old days, but the two of them could still slip into an argument over absolutely nothing. “I believe in what Minghao’s doing,” Wonwoo said, voice neutral, “and he needs my help to do it. If that means dealing with the politics then so be it.”</p><p><i>I’ll be the compass, you be the brain.</i> That’s what Minghao had said to him, when he proposed his idea to Wonwoo all those years ago in the Fire Nation. Anyone else and Wonwoo would’ve refused, but he’d never once known Minghao’s compass to be off before.</p><p>“I believe in it too,” Soonyoung said. He backed up to the other side of the room and sat down hard on the sofa there. Loosened his cuffs and ran a hand through his hair. Court didn’t suit him at all, but he did look terribly handsome in formal clothing. “But aren’t you sick of being here?”</p><p>“Where else would I go?” Wonwoo asked. “My parents disinherited me. There’s nothing left for me in Gaoling. Nothing there for you either.” Soonyoung was an orphan, enrolled in the same expensive academy as Wonwoo thanks to a benevolent sponsor who had since passed away.</p><p>A thoughtful look appeared on Soonyoung’s face that usually meant he was about to say something he shouldn’t. “Ironic, isn’t it? That you’ve turned into exactly what they wanted you to be after all?”</p><p>Fifteen-year-old Wonwoo would’ve taken the bait. Twenty-year-old Wonwoo probably would’ve too. But Wonwoo was twenty-seven, and he didn’t want to fight. Least of all with Soonyoung.</p><p>“Yes,” he said. He wondered if he was supposed to feel ashamed. “And I’m beginning to think that it’s not such a bad thing.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Halfway to Gaoling, Wonwoo meets a ghost.</p><p>“You’ve built something,” she says to him. She’s an ordinary-looking woman with an ordinary-looking face, but she emanates the same kind of peculiar glow as Joshua when he visits Wonwoo from the Spirit World. “Haven’t you?”</p><p>She’s sitting on the charred remains of a fountain in a town square. The ground is pure white with ash. This village must’ve been burned to the ground during the Fire Nation conquests and no one ever returned to rebuild it. There are a hundred stories just like it all over the Earth Kingdom. </p><p><i>Pain does strange things to places,</i> Junhui told him once, what feels like a lifetime ago now. Ruins in the sky, cool and silent. A sole survivor. <i>To people, too.</i></p><p>“I built a city,” Wonwoo says. His ostrich horse waits nervously back by the edge of the square.</p><p>Her hands and lips are black with soot and she has the saddest eyes Wonwoo has ever seen. “No,” she says. “Something else.”</p><p>“A mountain,” Wonwoo says. “I once made a mountain. But I don’t want to talk about the war.”</p><p>She smiles grimly. “And yet you are, are you not?”</p><p>Of all the days, that’s the one Wonwoo wants to talk about the least. Jun and Joshua had both tried, but what was there to say? They fought Fire Nation soldiers and they won. Only as the enemy airship was retreating into the sky did they realise that Soonyoung was gone. Desperate fury surged up from a place Wonwoo didn’t know he had inside him, white-hot.</p><p>He raised a mountain and bent lava for the first time in human history. Minghao tried to stop him and Wonwoo knocked him unconscious without even blinking. In the end Joshua had to bloodbend, and by then it was too late to save the people in the tiny farming community in the valley below.</p><p>“To turn your back on something you created is a truly terrible thing to do,” she tells him. </p><p>Wonwoo sees Soonyoung on the docks in Republic City, about to board a ferry.</p><p>“This isn’t what I wanted to happen,” Wonwoo had said then.</p><p>Eyes down, Soonyoung hiked the strap of his bag higher up on his shoulder and said, “Me neither.”</p><p>The town square, its white earth and blackened buildings.</p><p>Wonwoo looks down at the ghost. “I’m going home,” he tells her.</p><p>“No,” she replies, shaking her head slowly. There is even ash on her eyelashes. How terrible and how lonely it must be, to grieve all alone. “No, you aren’t.” </p><p>A wordless wind loops through the town square. The ash gathered on her shoulders scatters into it like snowflakes.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>I think I’d rather carry a boulder for a mile than carry a pebble forever.</i>
  </p>
</div><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Weightless,” Jun was whispering in his ear. His arms were around Wonwoo as everything in him trembled, right from his very core. His feet weren’t touching the ground. “You’re weightless. Shhh, it’s okay.”</p><p>On the ground nearby Joshua was on his hands and knees, dry-retching over and over into the dirt. The sound of burning and the smell of earth. </p><p>“Let go your earthly tether. Empty and become wind.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>When Wonwoo blasts through the wall of the mountain, Soonyoung doesn’t look surprised. The light shining in through the opening at Wonwoo’s back floods over the jarring familiarity of him, like opening the door to your childhood bedroom after years away. He looks up at Wonwoo, and he smiles.</p><p>“Well shit,” he says. His face is filthy but his eyes are bright. “You came after all.”</p><p>Wonwoo crosses the tiny cell in three strides and holds out his hand to Soonyoung, saying nothing. Nothing to say.</p><p>“They’re experimenting on Earthbender kids,” Soonyoung explains as they jog down the tunnel, after Wonwoo breaks down the front wall of his cell too. “When you forced this mountain up out of the ground ten years ago you did it by pushing one tectonic plate into another, and there’s been a natural volcano here ever since.”</p><p>Two guards pass across the corridor ahead of them. Soonyoung seizes Wonwoo by the shoulder and slams both of their backs against the wall. They wait there, listening to the footsteps grow further away.</p><p>“Which, by the way,” Soonyoung whispers, “no one ever fucking told me about. You moved a continent for me and didn’t think to mention it?” The footsteps are gone. Soonyoung pivots, using the grip he still has on Wonwoo’s shoulder to jerk him in, and kisses him square on the mouth. He releases Wonwoo and backs up, grinning. “You lava me.”</p><p>Wonwoo stares at him, too stunned to move. So stunned he doesn’t notice the pair of soldiers coming up on them from the opposite direction. He turns just in time to brace against one projectile of rock, letting it splinter against his forearms. The other whistles past his ear. </p><p>Soonyoung ducks beneath it and comes up against the first soldier from below. He uses his momentum to slam him sideways and head first against the rock wall of the tunnel, knocking him out. </p><p>When Soonyoung swivels around there’s a dagger in his hand that he must’ve lifted off the first soldier when they made contact. He slams the second back against the opposite wall. The blade at his jaw makes him hesitate for just long enough. Wonwoo digs the soles of his boots into the earth and bends the cave wall around his hands and feet, binding him there.</p><p>Soonyoung steps back, knife lowering. “You’ve lost your touch, Councilman,” he tells Wonwoo. He glances down, turning the dagger over in his hand. “Hey, this is mine! They took it off me when I was captured!” He holds it up at eye-level, grinning. “Pure platinum. The best things always find their way back somehow, don’t you think?”</p><p>Wonwoo ignores him. “Earthbender kids, a volcano…” He narrows his eyes. “They’re trying to make Lavabenders, aren’t they?”</p><p>“Yes,” says Soonyoung. He tosses the knife in a twirling arc through the air and catches it backhanded in his right, his preferred grip. “Now let’s go and stop them.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Your problem,” Wonwoo told Minghao as he panted on the ground, filthy and bruised, “is that you’re thinking like a Firebender. Firebending is about power and how you tame it. Fire weighs nothing. But Earth is stubborn. Earth doesn’t want to be moved.”</p><p>Minghao squinted up at him, pride and anger threatening to boil over in his eyes. A Firebender through and through. </p><p><i>Bring it</i>, Wonwoo had thought then, sixteen and hurt and looking for a fight. But Minghao just twisted his mouth and looked back down at the dirt. Perhaps that was why he was the Avatar and Wonwoo was just an ordinary Earthbender with no last name and one friend in the world.</p><p>“And when it does move,” Wonwoo went on, feeling disappointed, guilty and sorry for himself all at once, “it moves for good. You must never forget that.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In the last ten years a bustling little tourist town has sprung up in the valley beside the mountain. That’s where Wonwoo and Soonyoung drag their battered bodies after they fight their way through the mountain, free the Earthbenders and hand the group’s leaders over to the Earth Kingdom authorities.</p><p>“Volcanic rock and natural hot springs,” Soonyoung says, grinning conspiratorially. His lip is bleeding and his left eye will almost certainly be black tomorrow. “Makes a killing.”</p><p>There’s one healer in town, a sweet old woman from the south. She has them strip down to their undergarments and lie down in the shallow pool beneath her dark blue tent. The wind rolls over the fabric but doesn’t find a way in. The water is almost too hot to bear and the sprain in Wonwoo’s wrist throbs until she stands over him and begins healing.</p><p>Blessedly, Soonyoung waits for the healer to step out before opening his mouth and informing him, “You make the same noises when you’re getting healed and fucked.” </p><p>Wonwoo closes his eyes, but he wants to laugh. “I don’t make any noise.”</p><p>“You do,” Soonyoung insists, like he’s the world-leading expert on the topic. “You’ve just gotta listen closely.”</p><p>The water is still singing, emanating a greenish glow from the residual healing energy. The top of Wonwoo’s chest and the tips of his feet are exposed to the air, and the evening is growing cold. Beside him, Soonyoung lifts his hand above the surface just to watch the water drip off it.</p><p>“We would’ve been miserable, wouldn’t we?” Wonwoo asks. Body tingling all over. <i>Tell me I’m right so I can live with it</i>, is what he means. He would say it, if he were braver.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Soonyoung says, earnest. “I really don’t.” Years since they’ve seen each other and Soonyoung still won’t go easy on him. “Maybe if I stuck around we’d have learned how to actually talk to each other.”</p><p>Wonwoo snorts. “Doubtful.”</p><p>“Yeah, but who knows?” Voices pass by outside the tent. A family, probably heading back to their guesthouse after bathing in the hot springs. Wonwoo tries to imagine their faces but comes up blank. “I don’t think it matters anyway. I hated Republic City, and I know you hated being out here even if you never complained.”</p><p>One time at a dinner with Fire Nation officials, who drank liquor so potent that a fly wandered into Wonwoo’s cup and died instantly, Soonyoung got so drunk that he couldn’t even make it back upstairs to his suite.</p><p>“I think about the war every day,” he told Wonwoo, tears running down his face, slumped on his knees against the wall like he was praying. “Those were the best days of my life.”</p><p>Soonyoung isn’t good with confinement. Hasn’t been ever since he was taken away on an airship and thrown into a Fire Nation prison camp for six months. But Wonwoo likes the city. He likes having a bedroom filled with his own things, likes waking up at the same time every morning and never having to run for his life. Secretly, Wonwoo had always thought that’s why Soonyoung wasn’t born an Earthbender and he was. To Earthbend you needed a steady stance. Two feet firmly on the ground.</p><p>Soonyoung sits up, ignoring the healer’s orders to lie flat and soak in the residual energy. Water falls off his bare chest, aquatic glow of the reflection swirling over his skin. His hair is slicked back against his skull and beads of water balance on his jaw. He looks down at Wonwoo, gaze gravitational. Wonwoo braces for it.</p><p>“I’m gonna say it,” Soonyoung warns. “You finally gonna let me?”</p><p>Wonwoo’s heart throws itself against his ribcage in double time. “Yeah,” he whispers. “God, I was so cruel to you. I can’t believe you didn’t hate me.”</p><p>“You know I couldn’t,” Soonyoung says, eyes lowering to the water, lips frigid blue. His voice solemn but not shy. “Not when I’ve loved you my whole damn life.”</p><p>If it weren't for the earth holding him up, Wonwoo’s pretty sure he would sink right down to the center of the world.</p><p>“I knew,” he murmurs. “I know.” Soonyoung stares straight at him now, blue and perfect.  “How terrible is that?”</p><p>Soonyoung crawls toward him and braces a hand on the stone above Wonwoo’s head. Wonwoo squeezes his eyes shut. “C’mon, it wasn’t so bad. We had some good times.” He kisses the underside of Wonwoo’s jaw. “Some <i>really</i> good times.”</p><p>Wonwoo squirms. “Please don’t. If that sweet old lady comes back in and sees I’m hard through my underwear…” Soonyoung puffs a laugh against Wonwoo’s cheek. “It’s not funny. I’ll die, Soonyoung.”</p><p>“Alright then. For now.” Soonyoung kisses him swiftly on the lips, just once, and sits back. Wonwoo tastes blood. </p><p>The surface of the pool grows calm again. Soonyoung’s ankle rests over Wonwoo’s thigh, unsettlingly cool compared to the hot water. There are crickets somewhere close by.</p><p>“You’re not coming back,” Wonwoo asks, “are you?”</p><p>Wonwoo watches Soonyoung’s chest collapse as he sighs, each rib contracting inward. “No,” he says, “not for good. I don’t think I ever will.”</p><p>“But don’t you…” This is the part Wonwoo dreads the most. “What if I marry someone else?”</p><p>Soonyoung laughs like Wonwoo’s being stupid. Maybe he is. “Then invite me. Your kids can call me Uncle Soonyoung and I’ll teach them cool knife tricks.”</p><p>That image wreaks havoc inside Wonwoo’s chest cavity for reasons he can’t explain. “Wouldn’t that be cruel?” Wonwoo asks. “Someone once told me that it’s cruel to abandon things you created.”</p><p>Soonyoung shrugs. “Wouldn’t it be more cruel to expect me to come back with you? Or for me to make you leave your life behind to come with me?” He passes a hand over his slick black hair, squeezing the water out of it and into rivulets down his neck. “Isn’t that kind of archaic anyway? Just because two people love each other doesn’t mean they have to end up married, happily ever after.”</p><p>It’s hard to form a mountain. Wonwoo would know. It might be even harder to flatten one. </p><p>“I guess we’re going off-script, then,” Wonwoo says. </p><p>The water is barely glowing anymore. Soonyoung stands, water falling off his towering shadow in shards, and offers his hand down to Wonwoo. “What script?”</p><p>Wonwoo thinks of ash and snow. Of boulders and pebbles and all his unanswered questions. Friends for life.</p><p>And this time, just like every time before, he takes Soonyoung’s hand.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <i>How do I carry the weight of all that I’ve done, and all that was done to me?</i>
  </p>
</div><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Joshua arrives from the north on the last day of spring, squinting against the late afternoon sun reflecting off the water.</p><p>“Wonwoo,” he beams, stepping onto the docks. He rests his hand over Wonwoo’s spine as he hugs him. “Woah,” he exclaims as he steps back, eyes wide. “Nice chakra, man!”</p><p>The man behind him, dressed immaculately but moving down the gangplank with the grace of a fighter, must be Jeonghan. Sharp eyes and perfect smile, he’s not at all the kind of person Wonwoo imagined Joshua would marry. Then again, Wonwoo has never been good at imagining Joshua at all.</p><p>Jun arrived back from months-long business in Ba Sing Se last week, and the trade deals chaining Minghao to his desk for the past two months went through just yesterday. Wonwoo’s been his right-hand-man for over a decade now, and he knows exactly what that means for tonight’s private dinner in his chambers.</p><p>“All I’m saying,” Jun says, eyes half-closed even though he doesn’t seem keen on his wine, nor on the hard spirits Jeonghan is throwing back like water, “is that I only have one mouth, right? Even if I did have three hands to eat with they’d just go to waste.”</p><p>Jeonghan raises one finger around his shot glass. “The third hand,” he says, pausing for effect, “is for condiments.” </p><p>Joshua leans over to Wonwoo as Jun rebuts again. “You wrote to him, right?” he whispers.</p><p>Wonwoo had, but it was incredibly difficult to get a letter to someone whose only listed address was ‘Nomadic’.</p><p>“Pants,” says a new voice by the door before Wonwoo can reply. “The third hand is to hold up your pants.”</p><p>There in the doorway, hair windswept and cheeks rosy, stands Soonyoung. He’s still dressed in his travel clothes. He unbuckles his knife holster and slings it off to the side, leaving it in a heap on Minghao’s antique entry rug. A terrible habit. It could get them all killed, if there were a war going on.</p><p>“Sorry I’m late,” he says, rounding the table and dropping into the empty seat between Wonwoo and Jun. “Ostrich horse trouble. Followed by bandit trouble, followed by- fuck me, are these egg tarts?”</p><p>It’s been almost a year. Soonyoung’s hair is long enough to brush his jaw and he has a new scar snaking around his elbow and disappearing up the sleeve of his shirt. Wonwoo will have to ask about it later.</p><p>It takes Soonyoung a minute and two egg tarts to disentangle himself from greetings with Jun and turn to look straight at Wonwoo. He’s leaner down the cheekbones, but the mischievous light in his eyes hasn’t changed one bit. </p><p>“Councilman,” he nods. There are crumbs stuck to his lips and he’s trying his absolute best not to laugh. “You’re looking well. I’d vote for you.”</p><p>Wonwoo frowns. “Council members don’t get voted in,” he begins, but with the way Soonyoung’s whole ribcage is shaking with the force of his laughter, he probably already knows. </p><p>Wonwoo stamps his foot under the table. A block of earth shoots up under the front leg of Soonyoung’s chair and makes it tilt backwards, hovering comically before it overbalances and dumps him out on the floor.</p><p>“No bending in my chambers,” Minghao says sternly, as Joshua points and laughs.</p><p>“You didn’t say anything when I Airbent three pastries directly into my mouth,” Jun points out. “Actually, you laughed.” Minghao pretends not to hear him but his face turns scarlet. It matches the colour-scheme of his chambers perfectly. He reaches silently for the wine bottle in the center of the table.</p><p>Beside Wonwoo, Soonyoung rights his chair and sits back down. “Alright, alright,” he says, grinning. “Truce. How have things been, really? And please don’t tell me about work stuff, I’ll get back on my ostrich horse and leave.”</p><p>Wonwoo had been about to do just that, actually. “Not work stuff? Uhh…” Soonyoung smirks. “I joined a Pai-sho club? Almost got a Sparrowkeet but realised it’d probably scream all night? Oh, and I started keeping a diary.”</p><p>Soonyoung reaches for an empty glass. “Oh yeah?”</p><p>Across the table, Minghao upturns the wine bottle into his glass but only a few drops trickle out. His frown deepens.</p><p>“It’s weird,” Wonwoo says. “Good-weird. Somehow all my entries for the first few months ended up with me asking myself the same question.”</p><p>Joshua tunes in, in his uncanny way of flocking to the tiniest clue of hurt like a white blood-cell. “And what question is that?” he asks, interested.</p><p>There’s an unopened bottle of wine just beyond Wonwoo’s plate. He stands in his chair and leans over the table to pick it up. Minghao, who’d been eyeing it off, is listening too now. </p><p>Fifteen years is a long time. A lot of things can change in fifteen years, but Wonwoo’s found that most things don’t.</p><p>“It’s okay,” Wonwoo tells them. “I think I worked out the answer.”</p><p>He opens up the bottle of wine, and together they share it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>dare i say: knifecat soonyoung</p></blockquote></div></div>
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